Verizon Media bridges linear and digital with unified measurement tool

Old certainties shatter

• The rapid rise of a plethora of streaming services has driven a wedge through the heart of TV adspend, as a once monolithic audience fragments across an ever-increasing array of content providers.

• This confusing picture has prompted Verizon Media to partner with Vizio and Nielsen to modernize reporting with a data-driven approach.

• The three-way partnership sees Verizon combine its content-based identity graph with Vizio’s automated content recognition data drawn from over 19m smart TVs and Nielsen’s established demographic experience.

• Per a Verizon Media blog post: “The Unified TV Report completes our audience analytics suite of TV planning, activation and reporting tools, including last year’s launch of the Cross Screen Planner, also in collaboration with Nielsen and now Vizio. Advertisers will now have a more holistic approach to planning, activating and optimizing their overall TV investment on our platform, as well as the opportunity to understand how it compares against other advertising channels.“

A solution is at hand

• Brands have been left to navigate this increasingly complex picture on their own, but with its Unified TV Report, Verizon Media believes it can shepherd advertising dollars to their optimal destination.

• The umbrella report offers enhanced analytics spanning audience reach across digital and linear media, ensuring brands can reliably gauge viewer numbers across both strands.

• The report also tallies the gross rating point (GRP), the metric governing potential audiences per advertising message, as well as cost per household.

• The measurement tool is also compatible with ConnectID, a persistent cookie-free tag built from the communications giant’s proprietary identity graph, which harnesses data from TV partner Vizio and data provider Nielsen.

A springboard for growth

• Verizon media claims to reach 148 million logged-in users drawn from 240 unique profiles and 400m separate devices, giving advertisers confidence that they are communicating at scale.

• Over a dozen advertisers beta tested the report, with CTV advertisers witnessing double-digit incremental reach versus linear TV over the past 30 days.

• Verizon Media cites the success of an unspecified car maker in early testing, which successfully minimized overlap between linear and advertising video on demand by learning lessons from a national TV campaign aired in the fourth quarter of 2020.